Projects in which I worked designing a strategy to manage the Customer Relationships of a company in order to drive sales and increase loyalty.
Service Design + CX + User Research
Overview
Description
Two of the most common challenges a company has to face are to increase sales of its products and services and earn customer loyalty. As strategic designers, we became the ally for the two companies that were facing those problems to understand what was the best way to address these challenges.
Through customer research, we identified that the companies that were making the difference in the market were those focused on delivering products and services of high quality and providing outstanding experiences for the customer while using them.
Our goal was to design a strategy that improves the customer’s overall experience by enabling our clients to better manage the interactions, from sales to customer service and marketing.
Role
Innovation Consultant + Researcher
Project 1:
Paper Industry
Fieldwork: 63 interviews conducted - 3 cities
Project 2:
Insurance Industry
Fieldwork: 18 interviews conducted - 3 cities
Process
1. Gain a deep understanding of the customers
The starting point was conducting in-depth interviews with key customers. In this exercise, we had the opportunity to listen to the customers, to capture their biggest needs, to know their desires, to understand what they use and how they use it, and the most relevant information we got was the decision drivers to acquire products and services.
2. Understand the customer's context
The customer could be either a single person or a company. In both cases, it was important to deeply understand the context: who are the stakeholders and what is their role, who takes the decisions, who use the products and services, who influence the decision, and what happens after they buy the product or service. We found out that the customer-relationship had to be built with all of the key stakeholders and not only with the person involved in the purchase process.
3. Make a Competitive Analysis
By performing a competitor analysis, we identified the major competitors of the brand. This analysis gave us information about the performance of their products, the differentiators in the sales process, and their customer relationship strategy. This gave us a clue about how the brand can be competitive in the market and we could identify gaps in products and services that the brand could fill, leading to an increase in sales.
4. Gather insights about how the experience can be improved
The last part of the process was to evaluate the current customer-relationship. In the whole experience, there are always value points and pain points. Based on our understanding, when the pain points are bigger or impactful than the value points, the brand will lose customers. As a result, the strategy must solve the problems found and increase the value by building a true customer-relationship.
Results
New products and services opportunities
Market segmentation
Customer relationship strategy directed toward each particular market segment
Learnings and strenghts
Biggest learnings
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Analyze large quantities of data: Due to these were my first projects, it was demanding for me to analyze large amounts of information. With practice and hours spent looking at the notes and post-it boards, I learned to select the relevant information, classify it and to identify the insights that were important for the research.
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Build a deep understanding of the context: The customers we worked with were part of a big ecosystem with interconnected stakeholders that interact with each other and have influence in the decision-making process. As a result, it was important to deeply understand how that system works and what is the role and influence of each stakeholder.
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Create a market segmentation: One of the biggest challenges of the project was the market segmentation. I learned to identify the differentiator variables of the customers by which they can be classified, to build an algorithm that allows the brand to identify by itself each customer's segment, and build a directed CRM strategy for each market segment with a clear process of implementation.
Strenghts
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Connect with people: My soft skills allow me to gain trust in people, consequently, during the interviews, it is easy for me to establish deep conversations, gather relevant information, capture the biggest needs, read people's body language and make them feel heard. This is important for research because the interviewer has to go beyond a superficial conversation and understand the reasons behind the customer's behavior.
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Find opportunities: I have strategic thinking skills that allow me to instantly find opportunities while I am interviewing a customer or observing a context. I make constant reasoning process in which I analyze the market and I make connections between the market gaps and the customer needs that give rise to opportunities for the bussiness.